Inflation on Imports & Exports

In todays world no developing country can afford to isolate itself from the world economy. The benefits of outward-looking policies that help in taking advantage of the possibilities of international trade and capital flows are extensively discussed in the literature. In the 1990s, economic liberalization, globalization and openness have become the buzzwords. There has been a distinct shift in favor of greater integration of the world economy. The trend has been towards greater opening up and there is evidently a move away from the typical closed economy structure in most of the developing economies. In this paper, an attempt will be made to examine the influence of openness on inflation using data for selected developing economies.

Inflation has obvious costs to an economic and social system. A high rate of inflation could lead to substantial resources being wasted in inefficient transactions and speculation, and it destroys the basis for rational economic decisions and damages the credibility of most of the government policies.

Some characteristics of a properly functioning monetary economy are most vivid when we contrast it with a hyperinflationary situation in which money loses its usefulness (Krugman, 1991, p 77)2. Inflation also distorts the functioning of the price mechanism. The evidence from various studies on developing countries suggests that relative prices tend to become more volatile as inflation rises even where indexation is prevalent, partly because many governments attempt to protect certain segments of the population from inflation through selective price control measures. In addition, high inflation tends to be more volatile over time. The variability of inflation both between sectors and over time makes it difficult to plan ahead and diverts resources away from productive uses.

The paper opens up in Section 2 with a review of the relevant theory on the relationship between inflationary process and openness. Section 3 examines the existing empirical literature on the link between inflation and openness. The model is formulated in Section 4 along with brief discussions about the variables. Section 5 discusses the empirical results and their interpretation. Section 6 gives the summary and conclusions of the paper.

REVIEW OF THEORETICAL LITERATURE

The inflationary process has been a controversial topic in the literature, both theoretically as well as empirically. The precise nature of the relationship of price level with other macroeconomic variables has, despite years of research, remained an area of contention. The debate on the inflationary process in the closed economy context can be theoretically contained in these propositions:

The Monetarist School usually assumes a stable relationship between money-stock to nominal income. In their opinion 'fiscal deficit' is the root cause of the inflationary process in so far as it affects money supply. They argue that by reducing the rate of growth of base money (H or M0), which in most cases requires cutting down the 'fiscal deficit' of the government, the rate of inflation Friedman argues, Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon (1963, p 17). The role of money-financed fiscal deficits in the inflation process is theoretically well established and empirically documented (see for instance Polak, 1957; Khan and Knight, 1985)8. The Structuralist School, in contrast, argues that crucial sources of price rise are structural rigidities usually in the farm sector of a developing country. Excess demand drives up the price level triggering the inflationary process. symptom of these conflicting claims (Sanyal, 1996; Bhaduri, 1986; Kalecki, 1972; Baer and Beckmann, 1974).

Cost-plus pricing is an important feature of the price formation process especially in the non-farm sector. This sector has been growing fairly rapidly in most of the developing countries (World Bank, 2000/1). This argument is based on the cost-push factors in explaining the inflationary process. Interest rate and food prices are supposed to be the main cost transmission channels in this context. However, in the context of the open economy, these relationships are likely to undergo significant changes and could weaken the influence of above described variables.

The openness of an economy can be defined in various ways, for example, in terms of trade to GDP ratio, lower average tariff barriers, pruned import quotas, export subsidies, no barriers to foreign investment, government procurement policies etc.

THE MODEL

Inflation is a complex process and it is difficult to find a single empirical model that fits the circumstances of all the developing countries. It is, however, possible to identify key elements, which might influence the inflation process in different economies. In an open economy, the domestic price level and international price level would be equated. The relation between the two prices could be expressed as: Pi = (Pd) / (E)Where Pi = International Price levelPd = Domestic Price levelE = Exchange rate; i.e. Price of International currency in terms of Domestic CurrencyTaking the rate of growth, we getPi/Pi = (Pd/Pd) (E/E)This shows that the domestic inflation minus the change in the exchange rate would be equated to international inflation. In other words, whenever there is change in any one of the three terms, for the equality to be restored adjustments would be required in at least one of the variables on the right hand side of the equation. In the case of regulations in the exchange rate markets- as is generally the case with most of the developing countries - the adjustment would take place mainly through the trade channel. In this situation the domestic price level will largely bear the burden of restoring the balance in the external sector. If the domestic prices are higher than the international prices then there will be imports in the country which will put downward pressure on the domestic price level and vice versa. Since, the international prices are arrived at by pooling over large number of economies, assuming factors driving inflation in the constituent economies would differ, such process of pooling would produce more stable prices. Aligning with international economy, therefore, is expected to have stabilizing influence on the domestic prices.

The trend in recent years has been towards greater opening up of the international trade in most of the developing countries (See Graph 2 A and B). This exercise looks at the domestic price inflation and how it is influenced by the extent of openness. In the following empirical analysis openness is taken as the independent variable as it is the realised impact of a combination of the policies of the government in a country and the external shocks. The openness variable is proxied by

1. Trade to income ratio computed from value of export of goods and services plus value of imports of goods and services as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP), at nominal prices; 2. Import to income ratio and exports to income ratio computed by taking export and imports of goods and services respectively as a proportion of gross domestic product, both at nominal prices; As discussed above, there are various other possible measures that could be used as a proxy for openness but it is difficult to obtain long historical time series for most of these. So, we restricted ourselves to trade to income ratio, or the pair of export to income, and import to income ratio. The former indicates the overall openness of the economy. The latter pair helps to decompose the aggregate impact of trade on the inflationary process as the two are likely to influence the inflation dynamics in a differentiated manner. Import to income ratio reveals the import penetration that represents the degree of openness: the more open an economy, the lesser the restrictions in world trade, higher will be the import penetration in the domestic economy. Graph 1 and Graph 2 show the level of inflation and openness in these economies for the 1980 to 1997 period. Export to GDP ratio reflects the influence of foreign demand, which could also potentially affect the domestic inflationary process.

In addition to the openness variable/s, the other variables, which could influence the inflation outcome, were also considered (see Section 2 and 3 above). These included interest rate, money stock (monetary variables), agricultural output, national income (output variables), external debt, exchange rate, fuel imports, foreign investment as a proportion of GDP and domestic investment (external sector variables), public expenditure (fiscal variables) etc.

In order to test the hypothesis of influence of degree of openness on the inflation, which emerges from the theoretical and empirical literature, the following model was estimated: Y = 0 + 1 [X1] + 2 [X2] + 3 [X3] + Where

Y, the dependent variable, is the inflation rate (based on GDP deflator or consumer price index)

X1 = rate of growth of real agricultural value added. Although this variable is not generally used in the empirical literature on inflation and openness but as we saw in the section on theoretical literature it could have significant influence on the inflationary process in the developing countries but openness might reduce its influence.

X2 = the average annual growth rate of money and quasi money (or M2). As discussed earlier it is generally found to be most important variable in the context of understanding inflationary dynamics and therefore has been used in the present analysis.

X3 refers to Openness of an economy and is captured by two alternative measures, such as: a. Trade in goods and services as percent of GDP; and b. Exports, and Imports of goods and services as percent of GDP, separately. In effect, these are two independent variables.

We expect that 1 < 0, 2 > 0, 3 < 0

The empirical analysis in this paper is based on a panel data exercise for fifteen developing economies. These are Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, from the Latin America; Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, from South Asia; and Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, and South Korea from East Asia. We consider following alternative groupings to investigate the potential difference in the results from changing the composition of the group. The groupings considered are a) All 15 economies together; b) Non-hyperinflation and hyperinflation economies grouping i.e. segregating the panel on the basis of average annual inflation rate in excess of 30 per cent for hyperinflation economies; c) Area wise small and large economies, where small is defined as one with size of less than 500,000 square miles d) Geographical location wise classification of economies: these had three sub-groups South Asia, East Asia and Latin America e) High and low income economies: high income economies were defined as the one having per capita of over and above US $ 2000 and low income as the remaining24, and f) Emerging economies grouping (based on the classification by The Economist).

THE ESTIMATION PROCEDURE The main advantage of a panel data model, when compared to time series or cross-section analysis, is that it increases the degrees of freedom significantly. Thereby, it allows for lot of flexibility in the empirical estimation. Combining cross section and time series data makes it possible to incorporate a much larger number of explanatory variables In carrying out the empirical exercise we explored fixed effects, and random effects estimation methods (Greene, 1997, Johnston and Di Nardo, 1997).

EMPIRICAL FINDINGS AND INTERPRETATIONS

Table summarizes the means and coefficients of variation (CV) of different inflation and openness indicators for the countries covered in the empirical analysis. As can be noted from the table, almost all the countries have experienced an increase in their level of openness in the nineties relative to the eighties reflecting consensus among broad range of developing countries about its advantages. Average inflation rate has varied widely across these countries. Argentina, Brazil & Mexico have generally experienced high rates of inflation relative to other countries in the panel. These economies are also referred to as hyperinflation economies in the literature. For the rest of the economies, inflation rate is below 10 percent, barring Chile and Columbia. Table 2 presents the correlations between the inflation rate (based on GDP deflator and CPI) and measures of openness (i.e. trade; exports; and imports all as a percent of GDP) for all the countries in the panel. Correlation of inflation with trade across countries gives mixed results. For seven out of the fifteen countries it has negative sign and for the rest it has positive sign. As the influence of exports and imports on inflation could be different, so this is not inconsistent. Next, we decompose trade openness into exports and imports (both as percent of GDP). The correlation coefficient of exports with the inflation rate has expected positive sign for ten out of the fifteen countries. The correlation coefficient of imports with inflation also has expected negative sign for eleven out of the fifteen countries in our panel. The correlation exercises being essentially bivariate and simplistic calls for exploration in a more rigorous framework. This is what the remaining part of this section attempts to do

The final empirical analysis was based on different grouping of countries. We started with the aggregate analysis for all the 15 countries of the panel. Then we used the following groupings within this panel; first, consisted of non-hyperinflation economies, which were observed to be significantly and systematically altering the overall results. Second grouping relates to the geographical size of the countries. In the third grouping, we analysed the economies on the basis of their regional location. These groupings consisted of South Asia, East Asia and Latin America. Fourth form of classification was based on the high and low per capita income. Classification of the economies into emerging and non-emerging or of the time period into pre- and post 1990 did not yield statistically significant differences in behaviour. All these groupings were analysed using slope dummies. The results are analysed

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The empirical results in this paper, to some extent, substantiate the existing literature. Besides the usual macro variables like rate of growth of money (found to be important by Iyoha, 1973 and IMF, 1990) and agricultural output growth the openness variables (proxied by export to GDP ratio and Import to GDP ratio)32 were found to be significantly influencing the domestic inflation in the panel of 15 countries used in the empirical analysis. These are somewhat in congruence with the monetarists who argue money to be the most important variable affecting the inflationary process. Although where it differs from them is that agricultural output growth is also found to be an important explanatory variable affecting inflationary process. Together they point to the structuralist type of inflation dynamics in these economies. However, the importance of openness variables indicates that that is not a sufficient explanation. The openness variables (M-Y Ratio and X-Y Ratio) were found to be significantly affecting the inflationary process but in a way just opposite to each other. Whereas M-Y Ratio was observed to reduce the inflationary pressure, a higher X-Y Ratio tended to accentuate the inflationary pressure in these economies. These results hold for wide range of countries within this panel of 15 countries.

These results indicate that the traditional closed economy explanation for inflationary process remains important and adding the openness variables in the analysis complements the analytical and empirical perspective. The empirical analysis also examined the possible differences across these countries by dividing them in different categories as discussed in detail in the previous section. The results, for instance, for non-hyper inflation and hyperinflation economies (classification used by Romer, 1993 also) were found to be statistically very different, especially with respect to impact of agricultural output growth as also for the openness variables. The coefficient for agricultural output growth was found to be much smaller for the non-hyperinflation countries compared to for the hyperinflation economies. This is something that one would expect. The coefficient for X-Y ratio for the non-hyperinflation was also found to be much lower relative to the hyperinflation countries. The coefficient for M-Y ratio, on the other hand, was also found to be much smaller (in absolute terms) for the former relative to the latter. In other words, an increase of 1 percent in both exports and imports (as a percent of GDP) would leave the level of inflation lower by about half percent in the non-hyperinflation economies whereas for the hyperinflation economies it would result in rise in the inflation rate to the tune of 14 percent.

THE DATA SERIES AND THEIR SOURCES: The data is taken from the World Development Indicators CDROM of the World Bank and Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy published by the Reserve Bank of India33. The variables used in the analysis are inflation rate (based on GDP deflator and consumer price index), exchange rate with respect to U.S. dollar, growth of money stock, interest rate, real agricultural value added, real and nominal government expenditure, fuel imports, public debt, foreign direct investment, gross domestic product (real and nominal), and the openness variables. The variables used in the analysis were (source: World Bank, World Development Indicators CDROM and RBI, 2001): Agriculture, value added (constant LCU34) Agriculture covers forestry, hunting, and fishing as well as crops, and livestock. It is calculated without making deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets or depletion and degradation of natural resources. The industrial origin of value added is determined by the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC), revision 2. Data are in constant local currency. Exports of goods and services (as % of GDP) Included is the value of merchandise, freight, insurance, travel, and other non-factor services. Factor and property income (formerly called factor services), such as investment income, interest, and labor income, is excluded. GDP at market prices (constant LCU) Data are in constant local currency. GDP at market prices (current LCU) Data are in current local currency. GDP deflator (base year varies by country): GDP deflator is defined as the price index that measures the change in the price level of GDP relative to real output. It is calculated using GDP in current and constant 1987 local currency. Imports of goods and services (as % of GDP): Included is the value of merchandise, freight, insurance, travel, and other non-factor services. Factor and property income (formerly called factor services), such as investment income, interest, and labor income, is excluded. Inflation, consumer prices (annual %) Inflation as measured by the consumer price index reflects the annual percentage change in the cost to the average consumer of acquiring a fixed basket of goods and services. In general, a Laspeyres index formula is used. Inflation, GDP deflator (annual %) Inflation as measured by the annual growth rate of the GDP implicit deflator. GDP implicit deflator measures the average annual rate of price change in the economy as a whole for the periods shown.